Isovaders is a very simple concept, but all the same, one that I don't think has been done before - an isometric version of Space Invaders (perhaps you could guess from the name). Unfortunately, it's an example of a game that seems interesting as an idea, but that simply does not work when translated to reality.

The gameplay is, well, Space Invaders. The slowly approaching waves of ships, the barriers at the bottom of the screen protecting your pathetic little vessel from their bullets. There are two main changes from the original - one, everything is isometric, i.e. much, much harder to actually hit due to wonky perspective, and two, the enemies advance so quickly that it's perhaps completely impossible to win even the first level - I gave up after five tries, because, as compelling as the gameplay of Space Invaders might be, it can sometimes get old. So the first wave might be beatable after all, I never found out. None of this is helped by the fact that you're only allowed one shot on screen at a time, so every miss is painful - was that a feature of the original game? I don't remember. But on the bright side, there are online high scores.

The graphics are admittedly pretty nice. They're well done, fairly simple and mostly monochrome isometric graphics (everything is silver except for the bullets and a couple of details elsewhere, like the enemies' eyes). They basically look like the original Space Invaders, but one colour and sort of 3D and sideways in a way that makes it so you can't actually hit them. The sound effects are okay, if shockingly loud and slightly abrasive (especially the horrible "bonus ship" sound, which I can only presume is there to motivate you to kill the thing more quickly), and the "music", such as it is (a descending four note pattern that increases in speed as the enemies come closer), is fitting enough.

In short, all Isovaders does is take a game already so overcloned that the original genetic material is running thin, cloning it yet again, and making the enemies more difficult to hit, which is not really very endearing. However, it's possible that you might enjoy it more than I did; I will grant that it is at least well put together, and does exactly what it sets out to do, though I have my doubts as to the value of that goal. If it sounds interesting to you, give it a try.

Isometric can be confusing,guess thats why it's not so popular in action games and is relegated to point and click(RTS,sim and TBS),maybe if there were more M.C. Eschers in the world this would not be a problem.Isometric pixeled games are pretty much non existent in the commercial world due to polys so the only place you can find them is the indy scene.I tried to reverse engineer the space invader coin op by playing it at a local arcade joint,24hrsmame and some help from classicgaming.cc/classics/spaceinvaders.The coin op is brutally difficult(more games=more quarters=profit)unless you no the tricks which all old games have like lurking(also used in Asteroids)which works in space invaders & isovaders + your shot count,that's right you must count in your head or out loud every laser shot from the base cannon so you no on which shot to hit the mystery ship on to get 300 points,so missed shots are encouraged.isovader differs slightly from space invaders in the fact that the mystery ship will appear every 20 sum seconds if there is more that 1 invader,the coin op is significantly higher, which makes higher scoring more difficult.I enjoyed making it and encourage other people to try and reverse engineer an old coin op video game,also Im grateful for the review,good or bad reviews are necessary for humans.

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